


Sekibanki II

by Reavski



Series: Sekibanki [2]
Category: Touhou Project
Genre: F/M, Internal Conflict, POV Female Character, Resolution, Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-25
Updated: 2020-11-25
Packaged: 2021-03-09 19:28:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,301
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27711362
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Reavski/pseuds/Reavski
Summary: Sekibanki likes drink, but not company. Why, then, does she find herself time and again in the company of a certain man? What allies a furtive youkai with a nameless human? Resolution.
Series: Sekibanki [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2026787
Kudos: 3





	Sekibanki II

For all she might discern, this could well have been the previous dozen times.

From the chairs of their table, looking anywhere but straight down, it was possible to watch the accustomed backdrop of their meetings. All lengthwise the taproom, tables not unlike theirs were busy to capacity. Though the final snows of the winter had long run into wet slush, fur- and overcoat-clad backs were in evidence among the drinkers. The braziers, usually heating the room, had been removed a fortnight before – inviting heavier dress; still Sekibanki had welcomed having at last been spared the need to wash the reek of smoke out of her clothes every end of the week. The coldest stretch of the year had definitely had shortcomings otherwise than stiffened digits and chattering teeth. Sekibanki, if indeed only she, was satisfied by its passage.

All the same, things persisted which even the rotation of seasons could not wash away. These meetings, for instance.

Almost delivering one unsociable sigh, Sekibanki drew instead heftily from her glass of drink, enough to fill her mouth. A moment she allowed the sourness of its taste to mix with her mood, before at once swallowing it down. The action left her shoulders tensing in a delicious shudder.

The man opposite of her engaged in no such wine-aided calisthenics. Were Sekibanki to attempt at levity, she would have said he proved quieter than the rule tonight.

 _As quiet anyway,_ she amused inside, _as a man at a drink may be. Though not to take away from him, there is no shortage of louder examples._

Sekibanki curbed a warning tightening of her chest as she realised she was staring. Again. Willing it down, she delegated her eyes to counting bubbles in her drink. These, unguarded, moments had been many too many this night – not unlikely compounded by all the mulled wine she was taking in. Sekibanki’s mouth took on a crook to match.

Still even this was melted from her face as soon as another back-straightening sip. This, most recent, addition to the taproom’s wide array of treats was too wonderful a mixture to spoil with such petty concerns. To do so would have been an insult to winemakers everywhere. Not least to the one manning the bar behind her back. This, Sekibanki did not want to risk.

She drank again of her sour drink, and enjoyed another pleasant shiver.

Then she set her glass back down – and found herself looking straight into a pair of uncomfortable eyes.

“Ah.”

The gasp came from an uncertain direction, but whichever one of them it was had issued it, it left Sekibanki’s partner’s mouth hanging open in a fix. The man’s gaze, ambushed, dropped to the table – yet just as soon it returned, something like a decision forging behind it even as Sekibanki looked on. Against the best judgement, she schooled her own eyes to hold.

The man on the other side of the table sucked in a breath. The lukewarm taproom air wheezed between his clamped teeth. Then, with a visible difficulty, a low, accented voice was given its release.

“I apologise,” said Sekibanki’s unlikely partner. “I do not remember your name.”

The stark admission almost made the red-headed girl to reel.

“My name?”

Alcohol and shock had spoken, and at once Sekibanki reproached herself inside for sounding so startled.

“Yes,” he confirmed. A nod was slowly drawn. “I apologise.”

There was no falsehood in his words, however she searched them – only a firm expectation that she would excuse his slip of manners. Sekibanki raked her muddled thoughts for an appropriately dismissive reply.

“That’s—” she began, but all that followed was a helpless, “That’s… fine.” There was no understanding in her voice, so she shook her head and tried again. “That’s fine.”

“Then it is…?” the man prompted. “Seki—” Sekibanki began automatically, before apprehension reined in her tongue. At length she managed to crush it out with a will, and supplied, “My name is Sekibanki.”

Her partner’s eyes blinked in dim recognition. “Ah. That’s right. I have heard it. Seki Banki. That’s it.”

A pause crawled between them, long and fat and seeming keen to settle.

 _Was that it?_ Sekibanki might not keep out a touch of surprise at the conversation – however stunted and brief it had been. Her face squelched, and her brows came together above her nose. _This_ was _conversation, wasn’t it?_ Or had she in her advanced cups merely imagined her own voice giving up alarmed replies? Sekibanki drew another mouthful of her drink, the taste suddenly not as sour in comparison.

When her partner spoke again, she almost spat it back out.

“Seki? No, would that perhaps be Banki?...” The man experimented aloud. Then he shrugged with a surrender. “The protocol of this place – I do not grasp it. Seki Banki?”

It was a moment before she realised it had been a question.

“Yes? It’s… It’s fine.”

“Thank you.” Her partner squared his shoulders. “Seki Banki. I want to settle our tab.”

This made Sekibanki frown again. “Your turn is next week.”

“No.” There was a shake of a head crowned with overgrown hair. “No next week. Next week I leave.”

“Leave? Leave where?”

“Leave _here_. The village.” For what was likely the first time in their arrangement, Sekibanki witnessed her partner force something that could on a different face pass for a smile. “Won’t return,” he added. “Probably.”

“And you are telling me this, because...?”

“Ah.” He looked troubled. “See… We have been meeting for half a year. I understand having me here was of… use, to you. This will end, soon. For which I apologise.”

 _Half a year!_ Had it been so, or had he exaggerated their acquaintance, as men were wont to do? Sekibanki battled back the heat rising in her ears. A more sober part of her mind attempted a count of holy-days come and gone since their initial meeting. That part alone was not enough. The months were blurred and similar. Sekibanki’s frown tightened.

Mistaking the gymnastics of her brows for a question (or perhaps the matter of the question itself), the man hurried on to explain.

“I do not fit here,” he confessed, surrounded by evidence. “For a time, I believed it may become otherwise. This has since changed. I do not return to the Outside World, for it is now impossible. I am taking the only remaining way out. I apologise that this will inconvenience you.”

Had she been more frugal on drink that night, Sekibanki may have palmed the matter away with never a care. As she was now, it was all she could do to present her partner with a blank stare. A selection of empty, unneeded words formed on her tongue, and it was her sheer wonder which stayed them from flying out and making a commotion.

 _Half a year_ , she chewed the estimation over once more _. Or near on to make no matter, apparently – enough to make this man whom I don’t know to apologise to me_. Sekibanki had not been apologised to often in her semblance of a life, and it was not a thing she knew readily what to do with. _Had_ she to do anything? Just as the man had conceded ignorance of proper conduct, so the red-headed girl knew only those manners absolutely needed to maintain a decent standing among the villagers. Oh, she could issue a mean apology herself if the circumstance presented. Yet how to _take_ one had never featured much in her mind. What for would these clueless people apologise to such an unobtrusive townswoman as she? And what for, _by the gods_ , would they apologise to the headless one who stalked their streets at night?

 _They should be screaming_ , thought Sekibanki indignantly, _not apologising._

In a single, manner-defying gulp, she downed the rest of her drink. Then she stood, and – before her tongue had time to shrivel up – she called to the man seated opposite.

“You.” _Gods alone know what_ your _name is._ “Get up. Come.”

There was no reply as she span to leave this crowded taproom, almost tossing up the tails of the cape she had left at home on a reflex. She did not look to confirm whether her partner had followed. Nor was it needed. No sooner than she had thrown open the exiting door, a courteous arm caught it and held it from behind. Then it filed out after her, onto the sodden street.

The night was as biting as the one before it had been, and the one before that; still the cold exhalations of the wind were the last thing on Sekibanki’s mind. Were she to pay attention, she could hear the sound of their shoes pulling free of the street’s muck, or listen as the ruckus of their favourite tavern fast faded away. She did neither. The part of her concerned with such human impressions had been shoved aside.

Another Sekibanki now stamped along the street, her night creature’s eyes scanning about with undisguised fervour. Another place should be her “taproom” tonight: a dark, isolated place – one she might flee quickly, once her hunger has been satisfied. Soon, and she found just such a secret retreat. A garden of a sort, or park, or grove – she cared not overmuch for the proper term. A few steps full of excitation and she was among the neatly-trimmed hedges, shrouded from the lights of the street, bathed in the shadow lining the place. A few more and gravel rasped underneath her feet as she ground her heels in, stopping and whipping around to face the unsuspecting man who had followed her in.

The man, too, had stopped. The man, too, was taking in the all-enveloping darkness.

The man, unlike her, was frowning.

A smile slit Sekibanki’s face like a wound with pristine white bone underneath. Her hands rose to her head, grasping it firmly by the temples. For one more starved moment she compelled her body to endure the thrill of anticipation.

Then, in a quick, savage wrench, she tore her head free.

The sound of ripping flesh was deliciously vile. The cartilage between the vertebras of her nape strained and snapped with a sickeningly moist _pop_. At last it all came away, strings of meat trailing, blood sloshing on the ground in gruesome spurts, before piping down to a menacing drip.

The headless horror stepped forward, its maniacally grinning head held out as a terrible gift to the man before her – man rendered stock still by shock and fright. Two eyes, as wide as saucers and likewise white, might but gape in mute terror as the monster presented its own head to him, as though in some sort of obscene tribute. Two foolish arms reached out, by themselves, and took the head in a pair of cold, quivering hands.

The headless monster danced back, twitching in grotesque delight as it drank, drank of the man’s fear.

… Only, there _was no fear._

The lurid grimace on Sekibanki’s face slacked, and she had to focus to remind the edges of her mouth to contort.

Yet when she turned her attention back to feeding, there was no reply.

Nothing was being moved. Nothing was being _filled_. The dark hunger coiling at the centre of her being was bloated and ungratified. An aching pull was everything that fought back when her reason began wresting control back from her instincts. Sekibanki had to gnash her teeth to bite back the howl the less civilised half of herself had been about to unloose. Enamel squeaked.

Slowly, painfully… and at last she re-mastered her decapitated body. A final, wilting, _dying_ hope of a meal was burnt away by a will made scalding by shame.

The reasoning part of her was squirming in its cage. _And why shouldn’t it?_ Sekibanki had wasted her drink, trashed the remainder of the night, broken her disguise, even soiled her outing clothes with all the blood – and for what? A stray chance at easy prey? An outlet for her resentment? Which of these exactly warranted the price?

She would have hung her head in embarrassment, had it not been ill-disposed to any such manoeuvres in its current place.

“Do you understand now?”

Her voice was resigned, and only teased out a stiffening of the man’s fingers when it broke the silence. Not fear. Certainly not terror. A mere tensing of the muscles – a natural human response to the sudden releasing of a sound nearby. The man, who would in all probability never again be her drinking partner, looked toward her body to give voice to his confusion, only realising the folly of it afterward. He returned his eyes to the head weighing down his arms.

More difficulty than usual was plain in the way his lips opened and closed. Opened and closed. _Like a freshly landed fish._

“I…” He swallowed. “You are…”

 _And yet, no fear_ , agonised Sekibanki. _Who is this madman?_ “A monster, yes,” she growled. “Was there _something_ about it that needed commentary?”

“Then… All along I have…”

A sigh broke out of Sekibanki’s severed throat. “You have been drinking with a monster.” _For half a year_. “You must be thankful that shall soon be done.”

The man, if ever he had shown capacity for discomfort, he was doing it now. Yet Sekibanki held no doubt her disembodied head was but part of the cause for his unease. How big a part, and why not bigger – these remained questions with thornier answers.

 _Maybe I should ask and be done with it,_ she speculated. _Speak the lunatic’s own tongue._

“Why aren’t you afraid?” she demanded.

Had she ever given him a true start – it was now.

“What? N—No!” His overlong hair was tossed left and right. “I am afraid! See?”

“A man who is afraid doesn’t _stroke_.”

“Ah.” There was a familiar sound. _So it was him who gasped back there – not me_ , Sekibanki thought. _Good to know_. “Your… Your skin,” the man said lamely. “It’s your skin. It feels… real.”

“I _am_ real,” hissed the severed head. “Terribly real.”

An unfamiliar sound followed. “See. I do not believe that.”

A moment came and chilled on the air before Sekibanki registered what the sound had been.

It had been _a chuckle_. A dark, self-damning chuckle, issued between lips she had thought incapable of such expression. This simplistic man had _chuckled_ at her.

Sekibanki had never had her existence questioned so brusquely, let alone when she was still in earshot, and the anger she had entertained had been quelled was welling up again. And yet when her reason managed to speak, and when she turned an indignant ear, she knew the chuckle had not been meant for her. The words had been. The rest… That had been merely her companion’s _personal_ indictment.

She resisted when she became aware the man’s hands were attempting to turn her head on its side. He did not surprise at the unseen force. No more than he had at the head being given to him moments before.

“You live,” he said.

Had it been so, or had she affixed it on her own, that a vestige of humour had marked his observation?

Sekibanki ignored it. “I do.”

“Your arteries are cut. So are your nerves. Yet you live. Yet you _speak_.”

Her body crossed its arms, as if guarding itself against examination. “I do,” she admitted warily.

“No.” Her companion shook his head. “No creature may live with its head removed. Still your body stands. Still you show no pain. Still you live.” He stared her down. “You are _impossible_. This must be a mirage, a nightmare, or a fakery. You have no right to exist.”

All at once, Sekibanki went taut.

Something in the pit of her stomach was born and died in the span of an instance, rupturing like a cracked eyeball, spraying her insides with the corrosive venom of doubt. The strange, alien sensation worked up from her abdomen to the stump of her neck, and in a flight of _something –_ something she had _seen_ many times, but never _experienced_ – her body lashed forward, wresting its head from her companion’s hands, then planting it back in its spot. The nauseous feeling of violated tissues melding back together offered only a fleeting semblance of being whole again. It was a stopgap cure.

Still, relief was relief – however small – and Sekibanki found herself recomposed enough to face her whilom companion once more. What she found meeting with her dismay was a returning thing. The same dark, melancholy chuckle as before.

“This,” said the strange man, “is why I don’t fit in.”

The headless – albeit possessed again of a head now – woman secured no reply but for the narrowing of her nocturnal eyes. The man, prompted by her silence, went on to clarify.

“These people—” here he swept his arms to include the surrounds, “—they believe you. You are natural to them. You exist. Not so here.” He touched a finger to one of his temples. “As we speak, my mind tells me you are an illusion. A pseud. You are not possible. I… I wonder why you had me keep you company.”

The question, sudden though it was, was a steadier ground for Sekibanki.

“You kept—” She hesitated, choked up by her own eagerness to deflect the conversation away from herself. “You kept… The others. You kept them at bay.”

“Not into socialising?”

Sekibanki wrenched her head left and right. The meat of her neck flared up with an itch she barely prevented showing on her face. “… No.”

Her companion mulled over the reply – whatever reluctant one it was. At last he produced a nod.

“Yes,” he said. “Stands to reason. I used you just the same.”

That surprised her. “You did?”

“As you did me,” the man reminded. “Myself, though, I... At least I am glad.” His arms drooped along his sides in defeat. “This village. It never had much use for me. I do not understand its culture. I am not strong. My historic knowledge, and my medicinal skills – they are irrelevant in this place. Neither does your kind profit from my presence here.”

Sekibanki scowled. “This is why you are glad?”

“That I was of use to someone, after all. To you. Some use.” He paused. Then, as though entertaining a private joke, he added: “Small steps deliver.” His shoulders made a weak shrug. “All the same, I am glad. And I am sorry. That I won’t be of use again. That I wounded you just now. I apologise.”

On the brim of offending at the implication of being _wounded,_ Sekibanki pushed the tips of her canines into her lower lip. A hot trickle slithered down past her chin. Sekibanki wiped it with a sleeve.

The damnation of it was, she truly _had_ been wounded. The persistent fraying on the edge of her awareness refusing to mend – it was a testament to the truth of the word. Her companion had been right to – if nothing else – beg forgiveness for causing her hurt. _No. Not right. Not at all_ , realised Sekibanki. _This – all of this – was my fault from the start._

Anger bled together with her lip, and as it was drained, so Sekibanki saw the extent of her error. This man – her companion, or whilom companion, or whatever else he now was – had never intended for this confrontation. There had never been more of Sekibanki in his mind than their queer arrangement to drink together, and her twice-malformed name. Nor had he feared her – but neither had he courted her. The desire to remove their debt had been motivated by principle, not sympathy. The warning of his departure had not been a call for attention, but functional courtesy, and the apologies… The ease of long practice with which he dispensed them perhaps proved them just as machinated as hers had been, whenever she had apologised to one of the townsmen.

For a tiny moment, which was as short as it was distracted, Sekibanki thought herself similar to this man. Just thought, however – nothing too dangerous. And only for a moment.

A wry smile squeezed out onto her face, pulling her teeth out of her lip. _You have lost, “Seki Banki,”_ mocked a voice inside her head. Sekibanki, clinging onto the pillar of sanity, told the voice in a crisp manner what and where it could do with its opinions. The voice shrank, then took her advice.

Sekibanki breathed in. _Now, maybe I can save some face_.

With a whistle of exasperation she released the borrowed air, drawing herself up to meet her companion’s expectation. A thin, fabricated smirk pulled at one of her cheeks. The impulse to throw up the tails of her robe with a show was almost smarting. All the same Sekibanki kept her arms out of tomfoolery by tying them firmly against her chest.

“Very well,” she said, injecting just enough magnanimity into her voice to fool her companion. _I hope._ “Your apologies are human and thus cheap, but… for what they’re worth, I accept them.”

The man’s facial muscles tightened, then relaxed. Then he bowed: a low, deferential bow, as synthetic as Sekibanki’s excusal had been. “Thank you,” he murmured. “Then, about our tab—”

“No,” Sekibanki cut him off. _My turn now._ “Never mind the tab. I ill have need of your money. No. You were right. You _were_ useful to me, and for that, perhaps it is I who owes you a favour.”

The man, suspicious, glanced up from his fabricated bowing. “A favour?”

“Yes,” whispered Sekibanki, and her voice was the rustle of a corpse being dragged through a forest. “Tell me, human. _How would you like to die?_ ”

When he shot back to his full height, Sekibanki felt her instincts being jerked dangerously close the extremity of her skin. The man’s expression was wild. She put more force into her smile.

Her companion blinked. “How would I like to…?”

“Die.” Sekibanki made the word the strike of a gavel. “Not by my hand, that’s for sure. There are those among us monsters, however, who could be persuaded to assist you. Some may even make it painless.” She paused, mock-dramatically. “You spoke of your hatred for this place. You spoke of being unable to go back. You spoke of taking the only other way out. Well, I offer a few variations.”

“Seki Banki, I—”

“Hush!” Sekibanki hissed. “I know. There are rules in place. Those can be circumvented. They have been for years.” She scoffed. “You can take care of your last rites or whatever as you please. I’ll arrange for a… friend, to pick you up, in the meanwhile. Once ready, you may come find me. You know where my home is. Find me there.” _Since I’m guessing we will not be meeting over drinks again._ “Then, I’ll tell you where to go. You will only need to leave the village. The rest, well – that’ll be outside your power.”

“Seki Banki.”

Sekibanki closed her eyes. “What?” she groaned. “Not to your fickle liking? I _am_ doing you a favour, mind.”

There was a pause, with movement within she heard more than sensed.

“No.” The word was a familiar, odd-spoken phantom. “I do not want to die.”

Had Sekibanki’s tolerance been stretched before, now it was becoming like catgut on a lutenist’s instrument. Her crimson eyes flashed open. Her companion had looked all but about to release another black-humoured chuckle, but then his mortal reflexes engaged, and the chuckle was smothered before being given birth. The man swallowed what remained with a muffled _gulp_.

When Sekibanki released her own things, they were a glare and a harsh demand, “Are you playing with me, human?”

“I… am not.”

Her companion’s voice was level. Sekibanki glowered on all the same.

“What is your…” She searched a word otherwise than ‘game.’ “… _deal_ , then? You say you are leaving. Then you turn it around. Were you making a joke?”

“No.” Again he swung his head left and right. “No deal, Seki Banki. And no joke, either. I join my Lady, and that is it.”

Sekibanki snorted, then her gaze became knife-like. “Your ‘Lady?’”

“My Lady Toyosatomimi,” the man explained. “I join her in her sanctuary, on the day after tomorrow. This will require I leave my place in the village. My Lady Toyosatomimi decrees—”

“Who is this Toyosatomimi?”

Sekibanki’s companion blinked. Something that may have been disbelief formed on his untended face. Sekibanki cared not what it was. She watched the man fumble.

“My Lady— My Lady’s name is Miko. Toyosatomimi Miko? The Taoist. Maker of the Masks.” When even that achieved no recognition from the red-headed girl, he tried, “My Lady… partook in the religious war, some months back. She… She wore the cape. The twain-coloured cape.”

“Ah.” Sekibanki’s tone was prickly. “One of _those_ eminences.”

“Yes!” The man before her clutched at this connection. Whether he had marked the disdain in her voice, he did not show, or say. “Yes, she. My Lady inducted me into the Tao this winter. Now my training is complete, I begin apprenticeship in the earnest. My chambers in my Lady’s domain, I am told, have already been made ready. Merely now I await an emissary to guide me through. My Lady’s teachings speak the need to remove oneself from one’s past, as a great saint once did. Thus, my place in the village shall be forfeit. My Lady’s sanctuary shall be my new—”

“Stop.” Sekibanki was palming her face. “Stop. Just shut up.”

The man did as told. Sekibanki dug her fingers into the bridge of her nose. Then she exhaled – and it was a slow, pained breath, which left her feeling half her previous size once it was come out.

 _This is what you get, “Seki Banki.”_ The jeering voice at the periphery of her mind was whispering. For a moment Sekibanki wondered when it had recovered from its last trouncing. The next moment she knew it had never had to. The voice was hers. It _had been_ hers, all along.

 _This is what I get, then_ , she satisfied this new discovery. Though not altogether new. The moment her drinking partner had for the first time broached their agreed silence had turned out a kernel of apprehension, which Sekibanki had since constantly nurtured. Whichever the cause for her playing along with this silly human’s silly human theatrics, she held no like for either possibility. The first had her ashamed of being too careless on her drinks. The second she would not have suspected of herself in her most disturbed times. A combination of the two had her clawing at her face again.

Sekibanki grunted a curse. She pulled her hand away and examined her nails. There was no blood. She had not broken skin. That was to the good. Any more, and her outing clothes, she felt, would have switched colour entirely.

 _We are a pair_ , she thought, itching. _He has been drinking with a monster. I have been drinking with a zealot._ What did that make the two of them? A few words volunteered themselves, to Sekibanki’s spat laughter. They fled from her bitter voice. All but one. And that, too, was a recurring curse.

_Similar._

Sekibanki had had enough. As soon as the leftover reason she still had clamped a hold on the idiotic grin tugging at the corners of her mouth, she rose and faced once more – perhaps for the last time – to the man who had hunched with her, for half a year, over dozens and more of different drinks. The man, mirroring Sekibanki, straightened his frail human back as well.

“Seki Banki?” he asked.

 _Of this, I tire as well_ , she answered in her head. “It’s one word,” she sighed. “Sekibanki. Not two.”

“Sekibanki,” repeated her partner, this time omitting the awkward hitch in the middle. Though if he were committing the correct name to memory, his tone alleged everything but. “Very well.”

“I don’t remember yours,” said Sekibanki.

“It’s—”

“Nor do I care to do so,” she cut in. “We are parting tonight. You said so yourself.”

“Yes.”

“Then, I don’t need to remember your name.”

“Maybe,” he surrendered. Then he corrected, “No, actually. You are right. Names are ephemeral, human things. My Lady will like anyway grant me a new one, once I enter her realm.”

“Oh?”

Sekibanki’s companion spread out his hands. “My Lady Toyosatomimi delights in naming new things to her home. Servants no different.”

Sekibanki allowed her lips to curl up. “That makes me want to hear your old name, just a little bit.”

They held a stare.

They _could_ hold a stare, Sekibanki and her partner.

Yet at the end of the minute the man had given up no names, old or otherwise. He had not risen to the bait. _Nor did I expect anything else,_ Sekibanki admitted to herself. _After all, I would have reacted the same_. She reviewed the thought inside her head. _Well. If I weren’t drunk, anyway_.

When he saw the red-headed girl acknowledge her defeat, the man – apparently now a yet unnamed Taoist – also lowered his defences. The tension, which had strummed between them since Sekibanki had steered them to the secluded garden, gave and loosened by degrees. Almost, and it would have vanished altogether.

And yet, whatever dark hunger had led the smaller of the two to threaten the larger one, and whatever overweening scepticism had enabled the larger not to fear the smaller one despite, one of them still was splashed with blood from neck to toe. This fact, if none other among the flock, kept things moored in a place which Sekibanki found more comforting than the totally relaxed alternative.

Almost a rule now, it had fallen to Sekibanki’s partner to raise the next point. “Then I take it our tab is settled,” he said. “We should be leaving soon. The night grows old.”

“Yes,” Sekibanki agreed. “That we should.”

The man looked her over. “Are you able to go home like this?”

“Yes. I am.”

“You may take my cloak.”

“No. I’ll get home just fine.”

“Are you certain? You look—”

Sekibanki growled, a cautionary sound. “Certain,” she told him, in a tone that would brook no argument. “I already permitted you to escort me home before. Quit pushing.”

“Of course.” The man drew another of those slow, deliberate bows, which could not be lesser like the genuine article than if Sekibanki were the one bowing. “Yes. You have done this before.”

“I have.”

“Of course,” he said.

Then, he span around… and left. _As always_ , a voice in Sekibanki’s head whispered. As always, there had been no superfluous goodbyes. As always, once their business was concluded, he took off in the same direction known only to himself.

And _as always_ , something in Sekibanki’s chest stirred at the sight of the now-familiar back turned and getting farther. Not irritation – for it would have been madness to irritate _now_ after what she had experienced – but a sense of _urgency_. A deep and, yes, barely resistible pull to do _something_ – yet not to liberate her head from its neck and uselessly throw it at him again, nor even to track him from the rooftops and wait a more opportune time to attempt the same.

No. This urge was something else. This urge, as it were, was borne of her human half, rather than the monstrous one which stalked the shadows at night. This urge was something much, much simpler. It was the simplest thing. It was foolish and unnecessary as well, but mostly it was simple.

As simple as curiosity.

Sekibanki, breathing in, gave her neck a mollifying scratch.

“Hey!” she called after her drinking companion. “Hold up!”

The man stopped. Then he turned.

Then, Sekibanki asked her question.


End file.
